Families across the country continue to struggle with the rising cost of food, gas, housing, and more. Even Halloween candy prices were up 13% this year! Even more scary: nonprofits are facing the same inflation pressures—and many of them came into 2022 already facing declines in donations, a cliff in pandemic relief support, workforce shortages, and increased demand for their services.

To meet rising costs, nonprofits face difficult choices. While they can work to raise more money, it takes time away from important programmatic priorities. Nonprofit leaders can try to cut costs, including eliminating staff cost-of-living adjustments. However, then they run the risk of not being able to carry out their critical missions. Some organizations could run a deficit and tap into reserves, but most nonprofits do not have that option.

How You Can Help Nonprofits Tackle Inflation Costs

As a lean funder, you have an opportunity to show you understand these difficulties by helping your nonprofit partners address rising inflation costs. And you can do so quickly by adding 10% to each of your active grants. Sending an extra $3,000 to a grantee that received a $30,000 grant may not sound like a lot. But it can make a big difference in helping with challenges today.

Earlier this year, we told our active Fidelity Charitable Trustees’ Initiative multi-year grantees that we were adding more money to their grants to account for inflation and the rising costs they’ve experienced during the last year. As a nonprofit- and sector-strengthening funder, we thought it was imperative to get creative and make sure we were looking out for the very organizations that we ask to bolster other nonprofits.

Read the full article about nonprofits and inflation costs by Tony Bowen at Exponent Philanthropy.